The present invention relates to refrigerated dough products. Specifically, the invention discloses a novel method for applying dry toppings to the surface of refrigerated dough products and the resulting dough piece of the method.
For many years, customers have enjoyed the convenience of packaged dough products. These dough products are commonly stored under normal refrigeration until the package is opened for baking. Over the years, the industry has developed a variety of different dough products suitable for packaging. Some popular dough products are breadstuffs, biscuits, and sweet goods.
The processing and packaging methods differ for different types of dough products. Two common types of dough products are rolled and biscuit-like products. "Rolled dough products" are dough products which are sheeted, cut into rectangular pieces, rolled into cylindrical shapes, and then slid into a container. Conversely, "biscuit-like dough products" are sheeted, cut into circular type pieces (e.g. hexagonal), and then a vacuum/pressure plunger holds and releases the biscuit-like individual pieces (e.g. eight) into a container.
FIG. 1 illustrates a typical processing method for both rolled and biscuit-like products. First, a dough mass is prepared 10. Next, the prepared dough mass travels through a sheeting line 12. The sheeting line 12 rolls the dough mass into a dough sheet of uniform thickness.
FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of a typical sheeting line for both rolled and biscuit-like dough products. The sheeting line consists of a plurality of roll stands 16. Each roll stand 16 consists of a plurality of vertically spaced roll pairs 17. Each roll pair is spaced closer together than the preceding roll pair. The progressive narrowing of the space between the roll pairs reduces the thickness of the dough sheet. Ultimately, once the dough proceeds through all the roll stands, a uniform dough sheet is made.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,593,676 discloses an example of a dough sheeting apparatus and is incorporated herein by reference.
Returning to FIG. 1, the uniform dough sheet is then cut 14 into individual dough pieces. The cutting step 14 differs for rolled and biscuit-like products. Prior to rolling, the rolled products are cut with the use of cutter rolls. A cutter roll is essentially a roll with a plurality of blades positioned thereon. As the dough travels on a conveyor, cutter rolls cut the dough sheet both longitudinally and transversely into evenly rectangular pieces. The dough sheet may also be perforated or slitted with perforator or slitter rolls.
Unlike rolled dough products, biscuit-like dough products are cut into dough pieces with the use of a cutter unit. The cutter unit has a plurality of openings defining a grid work. U.S. Pat. No. 3,427,783 discloses a cutter unit in which the openings have straight side walls and are preferably hexagonal in cross section. This patent is incorporated herein by reference. With the further use of a movable member, such as a roll, the dough sheet is pressed into the openings. The upper edge of the openings are adapted to cut the dough sheet into numerous dough pieces. Lastly, a compression means retains the dough pieces within the openings until the pieces are to be packed into a container.
After the dough sheet has been cut 14, the individual dough pieces are packaged 15. The packaging step 15 for the rolled dough products differs from that of the biscuit-like dough products. For rolled dough products, after the dough sheet is cut into rectangular pieces, the pieces are rolled into cylindrical shapes on a conveyor belt. The pieces of dough cylinders then fall into a series of loading spoons. Finally, the spoons are tipped to slide the dough pieces into containers aligned with the ends of the spoons.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,458,970 discloses an example of a dough packing apparatus for rolled dough products. This patent is incorporated herein by reference.
With biscuit-like dough products, plungers hold and release the individual dough pieces into containers. Either vacuum or pressure is supplied to the plungers to facilitate the holding and releasing of the dough pieces. When vacuum is supplied, a plunger holds a dough piece momentarily until the receiving container is positioned directly below the dough pieces. The plunger then lowers the dough piece into a container. The vacuum is released, and an air burst assures that the dough piece drops from the plunger tip into the container positioned beneath the cutter unit. The plunger prevents damage to the dough pieces or loss resulting from the dough pieces prematurely falling from the openings.
More recently, dry toppings have been added to various refrigerated dough products. The dry toppings add to the flavor and appearance of the traditional dough products. The type of dry toppings used directly depend on the selected dough product.
In the past, dry toppings were only added to rolled dough products. Common examples of rolled dough products are dinner rolls, danish rolls, and breadsticks. Dry toppings were commonly applied after the last roll stand, when the dough was fully sheeted. The sheeted dough would be cut, the dry toppings were applied, and then the dough pieces were rolled into cylindrical shapes. To maintain an even distribution of dry topping on the dough product, the selected dry toppings had to stick well to the floured dough handled on line. Thus, the only suitable dry toppings were fine and granular in nature.
Expanding to new varieties of dry toppings to be applied on the rolled dough products provided a problem. Dry toppings such as cracked wheat or rolled oats acted differently from the previous dry toppings handled on line. These dry toppings do not adhere well to the floured dough surface. As a result, two common problems occurred during the production process. First, the dry toppings would move towards the center of the dough product during the subsequent rolling process, producing a dough piece with patches of dry topping. Second, the dry toppings would easily fall off during the subsequent rolling, producing a dough piece with scarce amount of dry topping. Thus, dry toppings which did not readily adhere to the floured dough surface would not be evenly distributed on the surface of the rolled dough product.
Unlike the rolled dough products, the packing methods for biscuit-like dough products prevented the application of dry toppings after the dough was fully sheeted. Naturally, biscuits are a common example of a biscuit-like dough product. As described above, the packing method incorporates a plunger which holds the biscuits and releases them into a container. If the dry toppings were added after the sheeting line, as done with rolled dough products, it was thought the vacuum in the plunger would pull the topping off, thereby clogging the plunger and dropping the biscuit. Accordingly, prior to the present invention, dry toppings were not applied to biscuit-like dough products.
In sum, two problems were present with the prior methods. First, although dry toppings could be added to rolled dough products, the prior methods limited the varieties of dry toppings. Dry toppings which did not readily adhere to the floured dough surface were often sparsely distributed and resulted in a dough piece with patches of dry topping. Second, due to the packing method for biscuit-like dough products, dry toppings could not be added to biscuit-like dough products.
The present invention solves the dry topping problem for both rolled and biscuit-like dough products. Unexpectedly, applying and embedding a dry topping on the dough product produces a dough piece with evenly distributed dry topping. The novel embedding method of the present invention expands the variety of suitable dry toppings for rolled dough products. In addition, the invention teaches a method of applying dry toppings to biscuit-like dough products, which was impossible with prior methods.